The Times of India
Date: June 7, 2020
By: Rudroneel Ghosh in Talking Turkey 

In another important development for Cross-Taiwan Strait ties, defeated presidential candidate and hitherto Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu has been recalled by voters of the southern Taiwanese city. This is the first time that Taiwanese voters have recalled a mayor, and it clearly reflects growing Taiwanese distrust of China. This is evident from Han’s political rise and fall over the last one-and-a-half years. He rose from relative obscurity and won the Kaohsiung mayoral election in 2018, ending the national ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s two-decade hold over the city. But within months of taking office, reports started doing the rounds of Han actually launching a bid to secure his Kuomintang (KMT) party’s ticket for the 2020 Taiwan presidential polls. 

At the time, Han was seen as a relatively young, firebrand KMT leader. And a poll conducted by Taiwan’s Apple Daily in February last year actually put him well ahead of incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen for the presidential polls. But then things turned dramatically when pro-democracy protests broke out in Hong Kong over a proposed extradition bill that would have allowed fugitives to be transferred to mainland China. But Hongkongers saw this as undermining the city’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula and giving Beijing a handle to target dissidents. 

President Tsai latched onto this and declared support for the Hong Kong protesters, whereas Han struggled to articulate a clear position on the protests and the Hong Kong extradition bill. After all, he had travelled to China and met the head of Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office before he officially declared his presidential bid. Similarly, he had also met embattled Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam. On the other hand, Han during his presidential campaign had pushed for better economic ties with China and supported a peace deal with Beijing to make “Taiwan safe and richer”. 

But the Hong Kong protests completely torpedoed Han’s campaign and gave a huge boost to Tsai. And with Chinese President Xi Jinping also offering Taiwan its own ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula to facilitate reunification, the Taiwanese mood towards China totally soured and with it Han’s chances of becoming president plummeted.    [FULL  STORY]